PLAGUE DIARY 34: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Murder, She Said (1961)
It’s an Agatha Christie mystery so there’s not much to say, yes Miss Marple sets out to solve a crime and it all boils down to six people who start accusing each other, and then executing each other, one by one. It’s very adequately done; but there’s one element that makes this into an instant classic: Margaret Rutherford. If you’ve never come across Margaret Rutherford than you haven’t lived. I mean that. She is not just an actress. If you see her on screen she will be become a part of your life. She is a force of nature -- I knew she get me through one more night of quarantine. Her big stage hit was Noel Cowards’ Blithe Spirit — playing the nutty medium Madame Arcati. (Interestingly, the character of Arcati was based on the lesbian novelist Radcyffe Hall. Coward once spent a weekend with Hall in Dover, watching her try to contact the spirit of her ex-lover.) Apparently Margaret Rutherford was surprised when people found her funny. This in itself, is shocking. Her face alone is a giggle instigator. Imagine a potato left out in the rain, staring at you, nonplussed. When someone asked Margaret Rutherford how she felt about Madame Arcati’s wacky spiritualist practices (going into trances, humming old songs, speaking in the voice of a small child) she was flabbergasted. (That word suits Margaret Rutherford so well). No, Rutherford didn’t find anything odd about Madame Arcati at all. This is the secret of great comic acting, not only do you not ‘act funny’ but — and few can achieve this — you actually have to believe the character you are playing is serious. Miss Marple — despite resembling a wet potato — is serious about everything — she even opens an umbrella with a maniacally dedicated intention. To see her throw on a cape and muffler and run out the door is heaven; and her absolute refusal to be rattled by anything makes one know for certain that all is infinitely right with the world — COVID or no COVID. From the first scene where the police challenge her and she corrects them — “If you imagine that I am going to sit back and let everyone regard me as a dotty old maid you are very much mistaken” — there is a sturdy self-sufficiency about her that is better than God. And finally it’s almost impossible to look at her in that French maid’s outfit; a giant bouncing blob of flesh with a sequinned black bow stuck on it’s head. Or perhaps more accurately she appears to be— well, a man. Nothing makes Margaret Rutherford look more like a man than a dress. I’ve had my suspicions about her, so I went into a Wikipedia wormhole. The first clue is Coward hired her to play a lesbian (not only does the character have a lesbian pedigree but Madame Arcati’s insistence on bracing walks and invigorating bicycle rides are yes — not only more English than the queen — but more lesbian than a bad haircut). In addition, Coward surrounded himself with lesbians. They were his favourite people — Gertrude Lawrence (who had an affair with Beatrice Lillie — another Coward Favourite — as well as Dahne DuMaurier the famous novelist), Gladys Calthrop (Coward’s favourite designer) and Coward’s favourite actress Joyce Cary. But if that isn’t enough — Margaret Rutherford was married to a man six years her junior — Stringer Davis — who is quoted in Wikipedia as saying that: “for him she was not only a great talent but, above all, a beauty.” No straight man in his right mind would ever say that about Margaret Rutherford. In addition Davis is also in Murder She Said, and resembles an old woman somewhat more than Rutherford. But I’m not done yet. Later in life, Davis and Rutherford adopted a young gay man (whaaaa…?) named Gordon Hall. Are you sitting down? Gordon Hall was an extremely effeminate young writer who moved to New York, promptly met a hot black butler named Jean Paul Simmons, and promptly had a sex change — becoming Dawn Simmons after marrying him. (Gordon Hall claimed that he had been born with a large clitoris that was mistaken for a penis, but gay tribal lore has it that the promiscuous Gordon Hall had been a bit too prodigiously endowed for that.) When people who didn’t know Dawn was transsexual were shocked that she would marry a butler, Margaret Rutherford said “What would it matter, if he were a good butler?” And when they further objected that he was black, she said “Oh, I don’t mind Dawn marrying a black man, but I do wish she wasn’t marrying a Baptist.” I think we’ve stumbled on an essential page of queer history here, something that tells us our lives are not always exactly the same as yours. Something that also tells us that there are queers walking the streets today in these self-isolating times — queers who don’t lead ‘new normal’ lives (sexual or otherwise) and therefore aren’t married to the person they are with, and who are afraid they are going to be arrested for standing too close. All that said, I don’t love Margaret Rutherford because she was probably a raging bulldyke who blazed a trail — however closeted she had to be — or because she still managed to get an Oscar (for The V.I.P.s). I love her because she was more than a great actress. She was my friend. Perhaps the friends I’ve been talking about in these blogs are not living breathing people — perhaps they are the people I’ve met inside the movies I watched. For instance — Jean Harlow — well I got quite close to her in Red-Headed Woman, and Bette Davis and I went out for a drink when I watched The Star, and Paul Newman in The Rack asked me for some advice (but I found it hard to concentrate when speaking),  and during Of Human Hearts James Stewart and I shared a piece of American pie. (For your information, Shirley Temple wanted to share a drink but I refused.) And we haven’t even seen a Judy Garland movie yet. These are great actors because they became the parts they played, and yes, they are my friends, because they lived on screen and in my life! Theywere were real for the time that I knew them in the films that I love -- and if you challenge that then I won’t speak to you, no matter how flesh and blood you are. Because I know that tonight, when I think I’m going to scream if I turn on the TV only to hear one more bloated statistic, one more self-righteous weeping widow, or one more rictus-faced public health official — all I have to do is think of Margaret Rutherford in that kitchen, in that ridiculous maid’s outfit, sipping tea and assuring the police detective that he needn’t worry, because she thinks she just might know who the killer might be. She’s the mother that I 'kind-of' had — in our best moments. And nothing is more real than that.